


Branches

by Rotpeach



Series: The Great Tumblr Rehoming of 2018 [26]
Category: Boyfriend to Death (Visual Novels)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Edo Period, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Other, Shibari
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2019-09-27 16:50:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17165657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rotpeach/pseuds/Rotpeach
Summary: You know a wanderer who likes to tell tall tales. At least, you always assumed that's all they were.





	Branches

**Author's Note:**

> First in a series of Akira-centric Edo period pieces.

Akira is chased in by a storm, standing ragged and wind-blown in your open doorway with his back to the lightning and rain like a vengeful ghost. Whatever sarcastic quip you have ready for him flees your mind at the sight of the blood he’s dripping all over the floor as he stumbles into the room, and you rush to help him settle onto the tatami floor as he clutches at his chest with red, slick fingers.

“Akira, I’m not a doctor,” you’re chastising even as you go to the chest of drawers against the wall for something to treat his wounds. You never had any reason to own the array of medicinal herbs and ointments you possess now, but he keeps coming back like this and you’re tired of making midnight runs to the local temple, trying not to look suspicious as you ask to be taught how to stop someone from bleeding to death. 

“Maybe you should be,” he says with a weak laugh, peeling his clothing off of his body, and you grimace at the old, sticky blood that pulls from his skin in strings and splatters on the floor. 

“I don’t have the patience,” you tell him.

The wound is as large as you’d feared, a deep gouge in his abdomen with lacerations radiating out over his chest. You sit in front of him, setting a cloth pouch of your medical supplies and a bucket of water beside you and examine him in silence for a moment, following the trail of cuts and punctures along his collarbone and over his arms. 

“And what, exactly, leaves a person with injuries like this?” you ask tiredly, ignoring the playful twinkle in his eye.

“Did you know there’s a jubokko at the edge of this village?”

He’s referring to the “demon tree,” as the locals have taken to calling it, an eerie, gnarled thing that grows branches like twisting hands reaching skyward with vermillion leaves. There were just rumors at first, traveling merchants who passed it on their way into town who said they heard it whispering at night. 

 _“I am cold,”_ they claimed it said. _“It is so cold here. I have died a thousand deaths and I have yet to see paradise.”_

When one of the temple monks went to chant sutras beside it in the hopes of settling its spirit, he was nowhere to be found in the morning. But there were bones at the base of the tree, tangled in the roots, and flesh hanging from the branches. The leaves had turned an even more brilliant shade of red.

“We all know,” you say. “It’s killed a lot of people. None of us use that road anymore, but every now and then someone goes missing anyway. Its roots must be growing.”

“I would’ve appreciated a warning,” he says, sounding offended.

You roll your eyes and dampen a wash rag, smearing dried blood over his skin as you wipe it away. “And how would I have reached you?” you ask. “You’re never in the same place for more than a day or two. I doubt I could pay a courier enough to track you down just to give you a letter.”

“Ah. Good point.” He lets out a shaky sigh, both in relief and discomfort, as you clean the edges of the wound before squeezing excess water and blood into the bucket. You take a glass jar of something clear and cold—you don’t actually know what any of this stuff is, you just asked the monks to label the jars with what they’re for, and this says “for disinfecting”—and cover your hands with it. 

Akira is stoically silent, giving out a pained hiss from time to time as you clean the wound, coating his abdomen in the ointment. You glance up at his face occasionally, finding his eyes scrunched up in pain. “That’s it?” you ask, and he cracks open an eye to look at you. “I mean you really expect me to believe you were fighting the jubokko?”

“Why would I lie?”

“Akira,” you groan, “you say things like that every time you come here. Last time, it was because of a tsuchigumo—”

“I got paid for that,” he interrupts. “And it wasn’t so bad. The bites festered a little, but nothing had to be amputated.”

“—and before that, it was a trio of kamaitachi….”

“That was pretty bad,” he admits. “But you patched me up and it turned out fine, remember?”

You shake your head. “When are you going to tell me what you’re actually doing to get hurt like this?” 

He grins. You let out a long-suffering sigh.

“Fine. So how did the battle go?”

“I’m glad you asked,” he says, and you notice his voice has dropped a little lower and he’s eyeing your bare shoulder, exposed as your robe slides off one side of your body and you don’t dare pull it back in place with your hands covered in gore. You know he’s looking at the rough lines crisscrossing your body where the skin has been rubbed raw, mementos from his last visit.  “It took me by surprise,” he begins. “Obviously. I wouldn’t be in this bad of shape if it hadn’t.”

He was ambushed, you think, probably by bandits or something that cornered him on the road, brandishing swords and demanding everything he had on him. You almost feel bad for them.

“Its branches are strong and they feel rigid, but they move pretty fast. And they’re sharper than most swords nowadays.”

Maybe not a bandit, then. Maybe a samurai. You frown. What exactly is he doing that has him getting attacked by samurai?

“It stabbed me here,” he says, looking down at the large wound in his stomach, “and then it spread out its branches under my skin. It’s cold, I guess. It’s always looking for something warm.”

You follow the spiderweb of fine lines in his skin stretching up from his lower body and have a harder time explaining them away, but there must be something you can attribute them to other than the demon tree, because he’d be nothing but bone fragments in the soil if that were the case.

He must recognize the frustration in your eyes as you try to reason through what he’s told you, because his hand rises to cup your cheek and make you look at him. “Is it really so hard to believe?” he asks, and he does sound a bit disappointed.

You sigh. “I’m not insulting your strength,” you assure him. “Every time I see you, you look like you’ve come straight from a fight, and not a minor scuffle, either.” You rinse your hands and pick up a new jar—“for soothing,” this one reads—and begin smoothing the ointment it over his skin. “But nobody’s invincible, and the things you claim to be fighting have killed more people than I count.” 

“You’ll be happy to know they won’t kill anyone else,” he points out. “In fact, you should go look at the jubokko for yourself.”

“Sure,” you say just to placate him, but it makes him smile brightly.

“Are you almost done?” he asks, and you raise a brow, tracing one of the particularly vicious cuts along his forearm with your fingertips. 

“I’d like to make sure you don’t have any serious infections before you get much closer to me.”

“I don’t,” he promises, pushing your hands away so he can reach for the other side of your robe, sliding it down your shoulder to match and exposing your chest to him. Heat pools in the pit of your stomach at his half-lidded stare.

“At least let me wash my hands,” you stammer.

“Just leave them like that,” he says, “please.” 

You throw up your hands, too tired to argue with him. “I’m going to catch something and die because of you.”

He smirks. “My blood’s divine. If anything, it’ll make your skin softer.”

“Do you hear the things that come out of your mouth sometimes?”

“I’m being serious.”

“Yes, of course,” you say dismissively, standing to untie your obi. Akira rises to his feet and pushes your robes off of your body, letting them crumple in a pile on the floor behind you, and you shiver when he traces the lines with his fingers.

“I’m not the only one who missed this, right?” he asks hoarsely.

You shake your head. “Of course not.”

*

He tells you more about the battle as he ties the rope around you, creating a pattern like a turtle shell over your skin. He loops it behind you, binding your arms against your back, and you flinch at his warm breath hitting your neck. 

“The pain was unimaginable,” he says, “worse than anything I’ve felt before.”

You feel how hard he is when he leans forward to bring the rope around the front of your body, but he’s being so patient despite that, taking his time so your skin is perfectly sectioned into diamonds and pentagons, the rope resting exactly where it did before and rubbing pleasantly over the marks he left on you last time.

“I thought about you when it happened.” He runs a hand down your chest, touch light and teasing. “I thought about what I wanted to do to you.”

You shiver, looking down to watch his hand trail further down your body and between your legs. 

“That’s awful, right?” he asks b,reathlessly nipping at your earlobe. “Me thinking about messing you up?” 

“No,” you say, trying to keep your voice steady. “I don’t mind.”

“You don’t mind?”

“I like it,” you clarify, pleasure shooting down your spine when he chuckles and grasps your hips from behind, digging his fingers into your skin. 

“Yeah, I thought so.” You bite back a disappointed whine when his body heat disappears as he pulls away from you. “Turn around,” he orders. “Let me see the front.”

You do as he asks, sitting up straight on your knees and trembling as he takes in the sight of you, the discoloration of your skin shadowing your bindings. Every slight movement from the rise and fall of your shoulders as you breathe to your embarrassed fidgeting lets you feel the rigid caress of rope on your skin. Akira’s eyes trail back up to your face, holding your gaze silently as he waits for you to take the next step.

“Please,” you say, and you hear your own words becoming a whimper but you forge on anyway, “touch me.”

“Oh?” He tilts his head, looking at you with barely-restrained hunger in his eyes. “Where do you want me to touch you?”

“Anywhere’s fine, j-just….” You’re testing his patience. You see his hands shaking and his eyes burning, but you know he isn’t going to move until you say what he wants to hear. “Hurt me,” you say softly.

Finally, you both get what you want.

He was there, he tells you, in the grip of the jubokko’s branches that twisted tightly around his body, across his throat and down his back and around his wrists, both painful and tender, trying to stroke his skin and tear him to pieces at the same time. 

He does the same to you now, splays his hands over your back and makes goosebumps rise along your spine, but he also pinches and teases and rakes his nails down your sides, tracing the shapes he tied with the rope. He lingers where you’re most sensitive, fingers dipping down between your legs and over your heated flesh, where just the slightest turn of his wrist has you writhing and keening and whispering his name like a blessed mantra.

(“It wanted me,” he says. “It wanted to keep me, and it wanted to destroy me. It couldn’t do both, but it tried.”)

His palm falls hard across your back, the sensation heightened by the ropes that strain and pull when your body tenses. You inhale sharply when the next strike lands on your backside, and you feel the sting radiate through your whole body, shooting up your spine. 

You try to ask him for something—and you’re not sure what, senses overwhelmed and thoughts racing—but your words are failing you and all you get out is a shaky whimper. You hear Akira laugh breathlessly, pressing himself against your back and pulling your legs apart a little further. “You’re shaking so much right now,” he says. “I barely even did anything.”

“It’s…” You have to stop and take a breath to clear your head. “It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, it has been.” Akira puts a hand on your shoulder and eases your upper body down to the floor. Your cheek rests against the tatami mat as you crane your neck to look back at him, watching him stroke himself at the sight of you bound for him. He pushes teasingly at your entrance with the head of his cock and you whimper pleadingly. You’re rewarded with an adoring smile and a gentle hand stroking your head. “I guess I’m feeling a little merciful today,” he says, thrusting shallowly and working into you too slowly for your liking.

“A little less mercy would be nice,” you mutter, wriggling your hips impatiently.

That gets you another harsh slap on your ass, making you choke on the end of your sentence and arch your back. Akira leans forward to nip at your ear and whispers, “You’re going to be sorry you asked.”

Without warning, he starts to move, rolling his hips hard and fast against you. He keeps a grip on your forearms bound behind your back with one hand, blunt nails digging crescent-shaped marks into your skin, the other punctuating every thrust with a stinging swat, spanking you hard enough that you think you can already feel where the bruises will be.

(Jagged marks reaching across your skin like the remnants of branches coiling around you, both kind and cruel.)

“Harder, please,” you beg him.

Akira grips the side of your body to hold you still and gives a particularly harsh thrust, bottoming out inside of you and making your vision go white. “You’re being kind of demanding today,” he says, words strained like he’s holding back.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry—!”

He hushes you, and suddenly he’s smothering your body with his own, draping himself over your back and wrapping both hands around your throat. “It’s okay,” he says, “I’ll give you what you want.”

He fucks you harder, the sound of your bodies meeting louder than the rain or the thunder that seem so distant now. Your head is filled with his ragged breathing, the feeling of him kissing and suckling at your shoulder, the satisfying, nearly painful fullness every time he slides inside of you and your body clenches down around him, reluctant to let him go.

(The marks on your skin will last; days from now, they will still be there, and you will slide your robes off of your body as you sit on the porch beneath the full moon, and even when he is long gone you will still feel he is with you, still wrapped around you and inside you, like the jubokko that holds so tightly that it causes pain in whatever it touches.

But you don’t mind the pain.)

You’re both beyond words now. Your bodies move in unison and your breathing comes in short, labored pants. Akira’s fingers tighten around your throat and your entire body tenses as every sensation is heightened and you feel as though you’re being burned alive, but it’s a pleasant, familiar burn that you give yourself to without hesitation. 

Akira gives a low growl as his hips lock against yours and you feel him twitching and pulsing inside of you as his teeth sink into the flesh of your shoulder hard enough to break the skin. That’s all it takes to push you over the edge, a moan caught in your throat beneath his hands, and for a moment you see and hear nothing, and all you have to anchor you is Akira’s body wrapped around you.

He lets go of your neck and pulls out of you slowly, his hands smoothing down your sides and over your bruised backside as he licks the blood from your shoulder. Your knees are sore, your joints are aching, and you’re sucking air desperately into your burning lungs, but you want to stay exactly where you are. Akira begins to untie you, pressing his lips to where each knot rested on your skin, and for a while, the two of you stay there, catching your breath and listening to each other’s heartbeats.

*

“I actually came to ask a favor.”

You smile wryly, watching Akira lounge on your futon with his head propped up on one hand, still only half-dressed. Your gaze keeps wandering to the bandages wrapped around his lower torso, looking as pristine as when you cleaned his wounds earlier. It doesn’t seem possible that it wouldn’t reopen after all of the physical exertion, and yet he’s smiling like he never (allegedly) got into a fight with a demon tree. “I figured. What do you want?”

“A tattoo.”

You blink, surprised. “Really?”

“Yeah. I can’t believe I’ve known you this long and never gotten one done.” He grins. “You’re the best artist I know.”

You shrug and don’t acknowledge the compliment, turning away to hide the slight heat rising to your face. “It didn’t even occur to me that you might want one, actually. What were you thinking of?”

He grins. “Full body.”

“No.” When he opens his mouth to complain, you cut him off, “Akira, you get maimed on a regular basis. You’d destroy it in a matter of weeks.”

“I’d be careful,” he insists. You roll your eyes. “I mean it. I think that might make me a little more aware of what happens to my body.” He presses a hand to his own chest, over the red, tendril-shaped scrapes and bruises left behind by the jubokko. “I want you to mark me like I mark you,” he says, and you notice his voice drop an octave.

You shrug. “Maybe next time.”

He frowns briefly before his eyes light up with amusement. “Aw. Trying to make sure I’ll come back?”

You meet his eyes challengingly. “You’ll be back.”

His gaze flicks down to your throat and the outline of his hands on your skin, and you see his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallows. “Yeah,” he says, giving you a warm smile. “I will be.”

You see him off, walking with him to the edge of your village and reluctantly meeting his embrace one last time before he disappears somewhere for weeks without so much as a letter to tell you he’s still alive. You’ve learned not to worry; no matter how far he travels or what trouble he gets into, Akira always comes back. He gives you a kiss on the forehead and one final wave before he starts down a dirt road that disappears into the woods, and you wait until you can’t see him anymore to turn and head back home.

It’s then that you remember his ridiculous story about the jubokko, and, against your better judgment, you go to the other end of the village and walk carefully through the woods, following the trail of bones back to where the demon tree stands.

You freeze mid-stride, eyes widening in disbelief.

The jubokko is little more than a splintering tree stump now, split almost cleanly down the middle, the bark singed a charcoal black. 

It’s easy for you to tell yourself that it was struck by lightning in the night, but you think of Akira and his assurance that it wouldn’t hurt anyone again, and you start to wonder.


End file.
